Microsoft’s Zhang Sees China as Asia’s Innovation Center

Chinese engineers are well equipped to produce the kind of innovative work that their more illustrious American rivals are renowned for, said Ya-Qin Zhang, chairman of Microsoft’s Asia Pacific research and development group.

“The scale of innovators and the scale of the market will converge and eventually make China a key [innovation] center in the region,” Mr. Zhang said Wednesday at The Wall Street Journal’s Unleashing Innovation conference in Singapore. “There’s been more copying than innovation [in the past], but that’s going to change.”

“If you look at the last five years, China has invested in its R&D budget about 2.1% of [gross domestic product]… there’s a lot of activities in innovation,” he said during a panel discussion on whether China could shed its image as a global workshop and become a bastion of innovation.

“Looking at the productivity, measured by patents or products shipped, there’s not much difference between teams in China or in Redmond or in India,” the executive said.

However, Chinese innovators may have to find ways to make cultural adjustments to facilitate greater discussion and debate on how to tackle problems, Mr. Zhang said.

“If China can figure out how to foster provocative questioning and observing and experimenting and so on, if they can figure out how to keep that alive when those kids are growing up, and how to take advantage of that within their companies, China has a good a chance as anyone else to tackle this innovation challenge,” Mr. Gregersen said.